Category Archives: Game Design

Dice and Storytelling

By Will Swannack | Published: June 13, 2010
When I play board games I tend to get a bit… competitive. More so than I would like to admit. Consequently, I tend to be pretty irked when randomness gets in the way of a good competition. I prefer something like Puerto Rico to Race for the Galaxy (but love both). It’s rare to find [...]
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Ra

By Will Swannack | Published: May 25, 2010
Ra is an exceptionally simple and elegant board game. Players typically can only choose between two options on their turn. The first option is to draw a tile from a bag and add it to an increasing pile of tiles on the game board. The second is to declare Ra which starts an auction for [...]
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Genre Strengths – Dungeon Crawl

By Will Swannack | Published: May 5, 2010
Example games - Etrian Odyssey (DS), Shiren the Wanderer (Wii/DS), Diablo 2 (PC), SMT: Strange Journey (DS) This is a quick look at some strengths of the genre with examples from games that use them well. This isn't intended to be comprehensive, just a quick glance of stuff I would try and utilize if I were making a game in this genre. Exploration: One of the strongest pulls of a dungeon crawl is wanting to see what's around the corner. Typically a level of a dungeon crawl begins with exploration and ends when the map is fully uncovered (or at least proceeds to a boss fight). Click to read more.
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